A few days ago I was with a group of women when someone made an interesting comment. She was remembering a time when she was away from home and she found out about a tragedy on the news. I think it was a school shooting. Her first response was that she needed to be the one to break the news to her kids. She couldn’t trust her husband, because he wouldn’t do it right. And all the other moms agreed. When it comes to talking to kids about big things, moms are the ones to handle it.
I was shocked. Not shocked as in judging, but shocked as in that thought has never crossed my mind. When it comes to the big and bad stuff of life, my husband is my go to guy.
Maybe it’s personality. I am by nature cautious where Kyle is confident. I think best when life is calm. Chaos comes and my thoughts scatter. But Kyle keeps his head. His practical wisdom rises to the occasion. I need that.
Of course sometimes – lots of times – Kyle’s perspective is different than mine. He says things I wouldn’t say. He does things I wouldn’t do. And he doesn’t do things I would do. Are you sure? I ask it a lot. But at the end of day I’ve learned to trust.
We’ll be married twenty-five years in December, which means I have history on my side. I can look back on a quarter of a century and see how things have turned out. So far so good. I look at boys almost grown and a dad’s influence bearing fruit. And the fruit is good. And so I trust.
I guess it’s the same with God. We risk trust and take his lead, even when it doesn’t make sense. We might even ask – Are you sure? But at the end of the day history speaks loud and fruit bears witness. So far so good. He seems to know what he’s doing.
The other day Nils came home from school with a question. He wanted to know who was the head of our house. That day in world history they’d been talking about patriarchy. Are we that? He wanted to know. I said, you’d be the best judge. Who do you think is head? He thought for a minute and said – it depends. I laughed. Exactly. It depends.
Whatever it is we are, I like it. I like being able to trust my husband. I like it that my boys can count on their dad to lead hard conversations. I’m glad it’s never crossed my mind to do it for him. And I like, very much, the fruit of these twenty-five years.
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